CVs and Resumes

How to draft a fantastic CV or Resume and how to know when and how to change it for maximum effect.

If you were to search on the Internet for advice on the layout and content of a CV or Resume, and you probably already have, you will have found many web sites offering you the Perfect CV, quite a few at a cost, and all of them producing different results.

There’s bad news and good news.

The bad news is that there is no such thing as a Perfect CV.
The good news is that the Perfect CV, for you, is the CV that opens the door to the interview.
The even better news is, sometimes you might get the interview without a CV at all! This doesn’t mean you don’t have to have one though. The work you do in preparing the CV is very necessary in getting you into the right mindset to perform well when you’re in contact with your next prospective employer.

Let’s start with the basics:

The CV needs to be on good quality paper (does it?)
It needs to be two pages long, no more no less (really?)
You must list all your jobs and academic achievements (why?)

Now then, we’ll take a different look at the CV. What does your next employer want to see on the document? It depends …

Who are you sending the CV to?
Human Resources department?
They are “detail” people, they look at CVs every day, especially when they are recruiting, when they may look at literally hundreds or even thousands. They like a CV laid out the way they want, with the information in the same place on every CV they look at. They may even disqualify CVs all together and insist on the completion of application forms, to make their life easier.

A hiring manager?
He’s a busy person and may well have delegated the hiring task to Human Resources Department where he will send the CVs without even looking at them. If he has decided he wants to look at the CVs first and extract the good ones, he’ll want to find the information he’s looking for quickly. Will your CV fire that information off the page?

The big boss man.
Is he expecting to see a CV at all? Whether he is or isn’t, the CV needs to be eye catching and tell him, in a matter of seconds, that you are the right person for the job.

Now you can see why there is no “one fits all” design. What we have found out, though, is that when a CV hits the desk in front of a potential employer, it has a matter of seconds, perhaps twenty at the outside, to make its mark or suffer the indignity of being filed in the trash can.

In further pages we’ll go on to look at various designs of CV, whether to send them on paper or electronically. We’ll find out how to get the right information in the right place. We’ll even talk of those occasions where you don’t send a CV at all!